Found this thread via random googling. I'm very frustrated! My experience so far:

-- I was conned into using the TWC DVR. I held out for three months, but I just bit the bullet and bought an HD Tivo.
-- I called TWC and scheduled an appointment. They didn't have anything for a week.
-- The day of the appointment, I unhooked the old DVR, set it aside, got the TiVo to the point where it needed to be, and waited.
-- The installer actually showed up early, which was nice. He had never seen a TiVo before (or at least not an S3), and looked for the slots in the back. I managed to eventually convince him the slots were in the front.
-- He did everything he could to try and bypass the firmware upgrade screen, which was just silly; if it needs an upgrade, it's going to have to go eventually, so what are you trying to accomplish? Based on my quick googling, I told him it could take up to forty minutes and he wasn't thrilled. But, after six attempts to try and bypass it somehow, he just gave in.
-- It finally finished, but we didn't get any channels and it wasn't working properly.
-- He read the serial number off to somebody at TWC, and they said they didn't have any record of it. They still tried to make it work, but their ultimate conclusion was that the cablecards were somehow fake (!!!). The contractor promised to come by tomorrow and get me hooked up with one that works. Without me noticing, he takes the old PVR back, meaning I have no TV at all.
-- I get a phone call today from the contractors, letting me know they're out of cable cards and have no idea when they're getting more. Don't call them, they'll call me when they have more. But, if I want, they can set me up with a TWC DVR until some cablecards come in, at some undefined point in the future.

OMG!!! I can't believe TWCNYC actually did something right. The guy that stopped by was great. Finished the install in under 15 mins. All channels coming in fine thus far. I'm pretty impressed with the field tech.

Wow! I have an install tomorrow in Queens and if it goes half as smoothly as yours did, I'll be impressed. Why does it feel like I'm rolling the dice when it comes to TWC and cable card installation? It's been over a year since the Series 3 came out and there's STILL drama for many folks. Incredible.

This morning, Albany TWC added 4 new HD channels using Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology, so we now have 13 HD channels using SDV and 2 HD On Demand channels, which makes them unavailable to me with my HD TiVo.

I get back from work, and roommate tells me that they finally put him on the phone with a person at dispatch, and -get this- dispatch claims they just had a meeting last night where TW decided they are no longer supporting cable cards in Tivo because they have a new HD DVR box themselves (and we can get it for only $12/month, of course). She told him it is simply impossible now to get all the channels (even basic cable channels) through cable cards in a Tivo. I actually have a receipt here with handwriting on it: "you can no longer receive channels through Tivo".

So I called TW tech support tonight, verified they have the correct host ID, and that's about all they will do. He claimed to send an authorization signal while we were on the phone, but nothing happened. On the pairing screen it still says "contact cable company". And on the conditional access screen it shows Val ? and no subscription info. So I have another tech coming out in 9 days now. What a pain.

Any suggestions? It seems like most people are able to fix it themselves on the phone with the cable company.

Thanks for any help.

Interesting how TW thinks they have they right to violate federal law. They have to support cablecards and the Tivo HD and S3 are both cablecard approved devices.

The only way you shouldn't be able to receive any channels is if they have changed their full channel lineup to SDV.

In response to your comments that TW is no longer supporting TiVo and cable cards, show your local reps at TW this quote:

“We’re strongly committed to ensuring that our subscribers who use CableCARD-enabled retail devices, including TiVo DVRs, have a satisfying and successful installation experience,” added Mike LaJoie, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Office, Time Warner Cable. McSlarrow and Rogers said that cable and TiVo representatives are committed to continuing a dialogue to resolve any future technology issues that may arise.

Just one further note--it is almost stupid for all of us to put up with inconsistent replies from local Time Warner locations. Mine in Austin happened to do pretty well. But if you're having TWC/TiVo/cablecard issues and you are not getting satisfaction from your local office, call TWC headquarters in Stamford CT and let them know of your problem. It seems likely that if enough people complain, things will change.

Mike LaJoie seems to be the man in charge, and while you probably won't get to talk to him, there's no doubt his office staff will recognize a surge in calls complaining about locally inconsistent cablecard policies. As nearly as I can determine, his office number is 203-328-0600.

It makes no sense for all of us to have all of these problems with a company that purports to provide its customers with good service. Let this man know if your local TWC company is not providing you with prompt and efficient service.

I know I am replying to my own message, but after I wrote it, and through the modern miracle of accidental communication, I actually talked to Mike LaJoie (he hit callback, I think).

In a nutshell, he confirmed what I have said. Without trying to quote him or discredit his wish to stay out of the limelight, it seemed clear to me that TWC is firmly committed to cablecards and other local boxes. What I heard was--if TWC has to pay $400 to supply a DVR to a customer and fix it if it breaks, why wouldn't we be happy for the customer to buy it himself?

I think any of you with local TWC stumbling blocks ought to seriously consider investing in a long-distance phone call to TWC's Stamford CT HQ office. Sometimes it takes a kick in the pants for the local offices to fall into line, but you will be doing all of us a favor if you make yourself heard.

I'm not a TW stockholder or even one of their best supporters, but I do think that when they are prodded, they can perform. It's the prodding that they need.

If any of you have ongoing cablecard/TiVo card problems, I hope you will reply to me privately, because although I can't make any promises, I may have a small pipeline into getting things sorted out.

On Tuesday I had TWC here in Austin come out for the initial install. He was running real late (about 8pm) but did show up. The Tivo had been up and running using OTA and analog cable for nearly a week, so no guided setup was required.

He installed an M-card, called in the info, checked a few channels, and left.
I was out of town Wednesday so did not check things out. On Thursday, I noticed that I was not receiving some HD channels that were not Switched Video.

I called TWC and he send a couple of ?hits? which did not change anything. Then they scheduled a truck roll for the next morning.
Tech showed up this morning and switched out the M-card. No change. Then he wanted to check/replace all splitters. Said it was probably a signal strength issue. I told him to run a temp line from the curb directly to Tivo rather than crawl around in my attic. He did and there was no change. After that, it was pretty obvious that the problem was either a CC isssue or a problem with the "office".

After a couple of hours with the tech talking to the office, they finally sent down 39 EMM's (?) and that fixed things.

Not sure why they could not have tried that when I was on the phone with them the day before. Would have been a whole lot cheaper than sending a tech out.

Currently I have the channels I am supposed to have. However, TWC in Austin is always adding channels to the switched list. I was told that new HD channels would be switched.
In both cases the tech was very nice and courtious. The phone tech was also.

Ever since I got my TiVo HD a few months ago, I've been wanting to buy an HD TV, but for now I've just got my analog cable hooked up to my TiVo HD, and all my TV's are SD. After reading these last several posts, I'm starting to think it'd be worth if it I at least wait until the dongle comes out before I go out and buy an HDTV.

Actually, I think there's one or two HD channels I can get through my analog cable already (with no cable card!) but that's not very many channels to justify buying an HDTV.

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I don't agree with you....if you've already got a TiVoHD, then you are shortchanging your household if you don't get an HDTV. I'm in Austin, and with my MultiStream cable card, I'm getting a great picture on all but a very few switched video channels.

If you are willing to go through a week or so of pain for getting a MultiStream cable card installed, you will be impressed by the quality of the picture and sound. True, there are some SDV channels that you won't get for a while, but you will get all of the premium channels that you choose to pay for in stunning quality, and you will get the local channels in whatever quality that they choose to broadcast.

I understand the economics of buying a new TV. My best advice is to go with Amazon, find their best price, and let their White Glove delivery service WOW you with their low price and their willingness to deliver to your house, set up the new set, and make sure it's working to your satisfaction.

I called TWC today and waited 25 mins just to schedule for my cable service to be disconnected, and their system dropped my call while I was waiting....and when I finally spoke to a human, it doesn't even get switch off until mid-next week...plus I have to bring the CableCards and Motorola box back to their offices. I'm keeping the RoadRunner for the time being simply because its been reliable and my job pays for it.... but any signs of trouble on that end, and I'll be setting up DSL with AT&T.

They didn't even ask me why I was canceling (They probably looked at all of the CableCard related service calls I logged).

In other news, DirecTV was installed 2 days after I ordered it by a very knowledgeable technician, who informed me that they will be releasing a Windows Media Server interface (announced at CES) which will give the system "to go" functionality. They did need to route another cable which was unexpected, but he did an excellent job hiding it. I get about 85 HD channels including locals I wasn't getting in HD with TWC. The compression/pixelation is noticeably improved (especially on SD channels and fast action HD scenes). I also like the way the system can be set to show the stream in its native format and allow for cropping, stretching, and pillowboxing....both on the TV and in the DVR itself. The HR-21 DVR interface is pretty good with a 320GB hard disk and SATA expandability. It's probably 75% on-par with the Tivo..... no suggestions, 30-second skip, and a few other nit-picky things...but it does the job, and there is so much more HD programming that it's worth the trade off.

I'm keeping the Tivo and the service for the next few months until I pony up for a Sonos music system or a Logitech Squeeze Box Duet. I like having Rhapsody, the extra tuners for OTA channels+Tivo-to-Go for those shows, and maybe they do something with downloaded content.... I might splurge and transfer the service to an S2 just for Tivo-to-Go....Does anyone know if Tivo has plans to put Rhapsody on S2 boxes?

My son's new TiVoHD (Christmas gift) led him to cancel TW in El Paso. After getting the "no cable cards, no TiVo support" lies from the local office, he decided to go with DirecTV. The main satellite drawback had always been the lack of locals in HD. Now, with an old set of rabbit-ears (and direct line-of-sight to all the transmitting towers on the hills overlooking the city), he uses the TiVo for all the networks, and an inexpensive satellite package for everything else.

Two contractors successfully installed a Motorola MCard into my TiVo HD this morning with minimal issues! (in North Dallas)

They showed up 30 minutes into the 4 hour window (nice), and told me they had experience with installing CCs in Tivos. I was glad, but still cautious. After getting off the phone the first time they looked at some channels and said I was good to go, and started to leave. But I told them to check the "digital tier" channels (channels that you can't get out of the wall, and need a digital cable box for), and they weren't coming in yet. (my guess is that the Card was "Validated", but not "Authorized"). After waiting on them for about 10 minutes, I told Guy 2 to have them send an "initialization". After a 5 minute wait, everything was good to go. The whole thing only took 30 minutes.

Under the "Conditional Access" screen I've got
"Val:V", "CP:Enabled", and "Auth:S" From what I've read, those are the correct values. The three things they needed were the serial # off the card, the Host ID, and the Data # (both are found in the CableCARD Pairing screen).

I currently have an SD TV, and have no premium or HD channels, so maybe that has something to do with it. I'll have my fingers crossed tho when I get an HDTV, and upgrade to the HD tier.

I'll echo the previous poster who said that contractors are able to send "hits" to CableCARDs. Their support people were sending all the hits, but eventually had to call TWC to finally get it working.

When none of my "digital tier" channels were coming in, the contractors seemed stumped. Their installation support people told them everything looked good. So Guy 1 called TWC directly and a talked to a really bitchy woman who said installers couldn't call directly, and that only the contractor's support people could call. So they called back to their support people and this TW chick had already called to hassle them about Guy 1 calling! What a ho! He was just trying to skip the middle man for the good of the customer (and his Saturday) and he got nothing but grief

Thanks to everyone on this forum, and others! Because of you I was well educated and knew to stand firm and not let the installer leave before all the proper CC values were displayed!

(The guy asked me if I worked at Best Buy or something since I knew so much about "this stuff" HA! tivocommunity.com baby!)

Im a Charter Technician living in a Time warner system in Eastern NC .I had my CC install today on my Tivo HD ,took about an hour , They sent an inhouse tech who saw my work truck in the drive and knew I knew what I was talking about. It was his second Tivo CC install so he let me do most of the navigating while he made the phone calls the first card went in without a hitch ,Second one wouldnt work at first I made him have dispatch remove it from the account ( Host and data #s) and put it back on after removing it once, then we ran through auth again still no pic the dispatcher figured it out she hadnt balanced services for the account with the outlets, Also I didnt have them remove Their HDC 8300 OPAC DVR from my account yet so they wouldnt screw the outlets up that way either,Went pretty smooth and the tech was good cause he was willing to listen .All in all not a bad experience.Believe me I know having done them that CC installs can be a nightmare ,One problem though after guided set up no program data fro NGC HD ,FSN HD,and HGTV HD but these are new to our line up so I asumme this is an update snafu with zap2it or something

Is it just me or has some of the framerates on the digital channels dropped in the Raleigh/Cary area? I wonder if they're compressing the heck out of things to get all those HD's online without SDV....

If anybody gets a TWNYC tech named "Danny" as their installer, you are in good hands! This past Saturday he showed up at 9:55am for a 10-2pm window. Quickly knew what to do and where to go with my TiVo HD. Popped in a single M-card then waited for it to update it's firmware but after about 15 minutes it seemed to hang at 99%. Uh-oh. Restarted the TiVo and the firmware restarted back at 0%. UGH! But this time around it went faster and we got to 100%. Called dispatch for authorization. Blank screen even on basics like CBS, NBC, NY1, etc. Right away he knew the authorization didn't go through. Called dispatch again to re-authorize and this time we got the basics. Went to TNT on channel 3 and blank screen. Right away he said he saw this before and called dispatch to connect him to the IT Dept. Not sure what they did on their end but low and behold, 5 minutes later, all the channels are coming through (I don't subscribe to any premiums). So for one last test I ask him to go to 702 (CBS HD) to test out some HD channels. As the Tivo flickers to adjust the resolution to HD from SD, it reboots itself! UH-OH again! Don't worry he says...He's seen this before too. Wait a couple of minutes to let the TiVo power back up and immediately switch to 702. A little flicker and yes! We're in business! All in all, the whole install took about 45 minutes. He was calm, collected, knew what he was doing and was on a friendly, first name basis with dispatch and IT. Bravo Danny for all your help and expertise!

All that's left is to finish watching the last couple of shows recorded on the TW DVR and then drop-kick that piece of crap back to TW. Couldn't help but smile all weekend as I re-programmed my Harmony 880 and re-established my season passes....using HD channels where available.

If there was a "Danny" in every major TW service region, the world would be a beautiful place. =o)

I'm in the process of buying an S3 HD TiVo box, but TW-Austin is giving me the run around. They want 35 dollars for some mug to come out and slide a cable card into my TiVo box?

I was also told I wont get a number of channels, I guess those are the two-way channels (OnDemand, etc).. but the list seemed mighty long.

Am I getting the run around here or what? I'm not paying anyone 35 bucks to come slide a card into a device slot.

Welcome to the getting ripped off for knowing more than your installer will Seems pretty normal, some folks have been able to pick up cards themselve and do a self install but there is no rhyme or reason why some areas alow this and some dont.

The S3 can use M-cards, but that model treats them as S-cards, ie, you'll need two M-cards to use the dual-tuner functionality.

I've got two S3's with Time-Warner, each with two M-cards, working correctly.

TTYL
David

I was told by a TiVO rep that this was a problem with an older software rev. He suggested that when I get my TiVO box to let it update to the latest TiVo software before putting in a cable card, after that I can run a single M-card. He said if you put the cards in before the update it causes some problem requiring two cards to be run even if it's an "M".

I was told by a TiVO rep that this was a problem with an older software rev. He suggested that when I get my TiVO box to let it update to the latest TiVo software before putting in a cable card, after that I can run a single M-card. He said if you put the cards in before the update it causes some problem requiring two cards to be run even if it's an "M".

Only the Tivo HD can run with a single M card, the S3 Classic still would need either 2 M cards or 2 S cards, regardless of software rev's

Well I'm looking at the S3 HD (300hr). So this still requires two M or two S's?

That is correct sir. Sorry. Some have said in the future that maybe the S3 will get M card functionality to utilize the dual stream of the card. Who knows why they couldnt backport the drivers to the original platform.

I'm in North Hollywood. I think it is TW "East San Fernando". I first called a week ago and they said they were out of stock of cable cards, and I should call back in a few days, and then I could just come pick up the cable cards at a local office.

So I called a few days later, and they told me they were never out of stock, and they had to send out a tech, so we scheduled it.

Tech came this morning, she tried a couple S cards, sat on the phone for a couple hours, wasn't able to get all the channels. Told me she needed to go find an M card. So she leaves for a couple hours. I leave for work and let my roommate deal with it. I get back from work, and roommate tells me that they finally put him on the phone with a person at dispatch, and -get this- dispatch claims they just had a meeting last night where TW decided they are no longer supporting cable cards in Tivo because they have a new HD DVR box themselves (and we can get it for only $12/month, of course). She told him it is simply impossible now to get all the channels (even basic cable channels) through cable cards in a Tivo. I actually have a receipt here with handwriting on it: "you can no longer receive channels through Tivo".

So I called TW tech support tonight, verified they have the correct host ID, and that's about all they will do. He claimed to send an authorization signal while we were on the phone, but nothing happened. On the pairing screen it still says "contact cable company". And on the conditional access screen it shows Val ? and no subscription info. So I have another tech coming out in 9 days now. What a pain.

Any suggestions? It seems like most people are able to fix it themselves on the phone with the cable company.

Thanks for any help.

Absolute crap on Time-Warner's part.
I have one neighbor (also a forum member) who has cablecards working fine in the East San Fernando with his Series 3s.

Don't be afraid not only to threaten but follow through with complaining to the FCC and the Los Angeles Cable commission on TW's refusal to support cablecards.
Time-Warner's already been taking heat from the City due to a rash of service complaints from the former Adelphia customers.

I had my S3 HD box up and going with basic cable for about a week before the CC install and experienced no problems. Now a few days later I am seeing pixelation, followed by a 5 second fast forward, then no sound for about 15 or more seconds. It seems random and it occurred twice last night during Comanche Moon

I live in Leawood Ks which is in TWC KC territory. I'm hoping there is an update that tivo can help me with and that it's not the m card because I don't want to be charged to walk another tech through the install process! Have any other TWC KC customers experienced this?

BTW I'm using this on a SDTV at a fixed 480i

unrelated but I'm in the market for a 32" HDTV if anyone knows of a good brand or model please let me know.

I have an HDTV and am about to hook up my HD TiVo to it. I have the Broadcast Basic package from TW Albany (NY). So I get the local stations plus a handful more (cspan, cw...). It's the most basic analog package required by law but not advertised by TW. Since I bought an HDTV, I also now get the local stations HD digital on 18.6, 18.10, etc.

I called TW to ask whether I'd need a cable card to use my TiVo program guide and they claimed that I wasn't supposed to be getting the local channels in HD under the plan I have. This isn't right, is it? I thought that the local stations had to be passed through unencrypted. I assumed if the channels are offered in HD, then the cable company must send them to me that way. Am I wrong?

Just got an HD, and don't have the cards yet. I can get the CBS affiliate (WRAL) on the expected 5-1, etc. channels (after scanning). However, I can't get it to see the other affiliate channels FOX, ABC, etc. which should be channels like 11-1 and 50-1, etc. Anyone able to get those?

I live out near mini-city near the triangle town center and I pickup the following channels OTA using an little table top indoor antenna:

5.x (CBS)
11.x (ABC)
17.x (nbc)
22.1 (CW)
28.x (myrdc)
50.x (fox)

Might be able to pick up others with a larger indoor or outdoor antenna. Just make sure when you set up your tivo that you set it up for antenna or antenna +cable if you are going to use both cable and antenna

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